A report claims that $50 trillion worth of financial assets have been wiped out in 2008, according to a report released Monday by the Asian Development Bank.
The report also unveiled how Asia was hit hardest with a financial loss of $9.6 trillion, or what is just over one year’s worth of Gross Domestic Product.
“Asia was hit harder than other parts of the developing world because the region’s markets have expanded much more rapidly,” the study said, noting that the value of financial assets to GDP rose to 370 percent of GDP in developing Asia in 2007 from 250 percent of GDP in 2003.
The data provide clear proof of the close connections between the markets and the economies around the world, leaving few, if any, countries immune to financial or economic fallouts elsewhere. A recovery can only now be envisaged for late 2009 or early 2010, according to the study.
If government bailouts around the globe are suppossed to be filling this $50,000,000,000,000 hole then they will need to be stepped up a notch.
Images from dborman2 and miro-foto adapted under Creative Commons.
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